S. M. Lawler, A. C. Boley, M. Connors, W. Fraser, B. Gladman, C. L. Johnson, J.J. Kavelaars, G. Osinski, L. Philpott, J. Rowe, P. Wiegert, R. Winslow
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There is a vibrant and effective planetary science community in Canada. We do research in the areas of meteoritics, asteroid and trans-Neptunian object orbits and compositions, and space weather, and are involved in space probe missions to study planetary surfaces and interiors. For Canadian planetary scientists to deliver the highest scientific impact possible, we have several recommendations. Our top recommendation is to join LSST and gain access to the full data releases by hosting a data centre, which could be done by adding to the CADC, which is already highly involved in hosting planetary data and supporting computational modelling for orbital studies. We also support MSE, which can provide spectroscopy and thus compositional information for thousands of small bodies. We support a Canadian-led microsatellite, POEP, which will provide small body sizes by measuring occultations.
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Second interstellar visitor may be carrying water from beyond our solar system, shocking study
A shocking new study suggests that the second interstellar object ever discovered, Comet 2I/Borisov, could be carrying water on it from beyond the Solar System.
The study suggests that 2I/Borisov, discovered on Aug. 30 by astronomer Gennady Borisov, is releasing water vapor on its journey.
"Using a simple sublimation model we estimate an H2O active area of 1.7 km2 [0.65 miles squared], which for current estimates for the size of Borisov suggests active fractions between 1-150 [percent], consistent with values measured in Solar System comets," the study's abstract states. It is common for asteroids in the Solar System to carry water.
The study was submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters and can be read on the arXiv repository ,
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"The discovery of interstellar comet 2I/Borisov provides an opportunity to sample the volatile composition of a comet that is unambiguously from outside our own Solar System, providing constraints on the physics and chemistry of other protostellar discs," the researchers wrote in the paper.
Best pictures of the solar system from the decade you were born - Business Insider
For decades, scientists have pointed Earthly lenses toward the sky to capture images of the cosmos. Even the earliest rockets that launched off the planet brought cameras into space.
At first, our photos of the solar system came back grainy, unclear, and colorless. The very first image taken in space, for example, came from a 33mm motion-picture camera that American scientists strapped to a captured German rocket and launched off Earth at the end of World War II. The camera fell back to Earth and shattered, but the film survived.
Other early solar-system images came as NASA and the Soviet Union explored the moon for the first time — people born in the 1950s and 60s grew up with the iconic photos of the first astronauts walking on the moon.
Since then, increasingly sophisticated missions have ventured farther into space with better and better cameras. Kids in the '80s got the first up-close images of Saturn and Neptune, while children today are accustomed to high-quality colorful shots of the deserts of Mars and swirling clouds of Jupiter.
Asteroid Hygiea is Round Enough That it Could Qualify as a Dwarf Planet, the Smallest in the
Within the Main Asteroid Belt , there are a number of larger bodies that have defied traditional classification. The largest among them is Ceres, which is followed by Vesta, Pallas, and Hygeia. Until recently, Ceres was thought to be the only object in the Main Belt large enough to undergo hydrostatic equilibrium – where an object is sufficiently massive that its gravity causes it to collapse into a roughly spherical shape.
However, it now seems that there is another body in the Main Belt that has earned the designation of "dwarf planet". Using data from the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument at the Very Large Telescope (VLT), an international team of astronomers found compelling evidence that Hygeia is actually round , making it the smallest dwarf planet in the Solar System.
Even before this came to light, Hygeia satisfied most of the qualifications for being designated as a dwarf planet – which were adopted by the IAU General Assembly in 2006. In accordance with these qualifications and definitions, a "dwarf planet" is:
Many things are taking place:
Campus solar system model draws intrigue from commuters and classrooms
A to-scale, 1-mile-long model of the solar system lines the West Woodruff Avenue sidewalk. Credit: Jackie Appel | For The Lantern
While most Ohio State students won't have the chance to travel through space, a new collaboration with artists and scientists brought small-scale space exploration to campus.
A to-scale, 1-mile-long model of the solar system that is 4.5 billion times smaller than the actual system lines the West Woodruff Avenue sidewalk. Ohio State collaborated with scientists, artists, fabricators and accessibility advocates to complete the project that has even become part of some lesson plans, Wayne Schlingman, planetarium director and main coordinator of the project, said.
The permanent model consists of a 1-foot-diameter sun followed by the eight planets at their appropriate distances and sizes, including Pluto. On West campus, Pluto marks the outer edge of the model that begins outside the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Chemistry Building.
NASA's Voyager Missions Were Amazing. Now Scientists Want a True Interstellar Probe | Space
WASHINGTON — Humanity should consider building an interstellar probe to see our neighborhood from an outside point of view, argued several scientists at a recent conference.
NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft are the only machines that people have sent beyond our solar system. These 42-year-old spacecraft are still functioning well enough to send us information from interstellar space, and many of their insights have been surprising, according to Stamatios (Tom) Krimigis, the principal investigator of the low-energy charged particle experiment that is still working on both spacecraft.
"The models have been wrong," Krimigis told delegates on Oct. 25 at the International Astronautical Congress held here. One prominent example was the shape of the heliosphere, or the region of space in which the stream of charged particles emanates from our sun and wraps around the solar system. Until the 2010s, scientists thought it had a fan shape; the Voyagers, upon crossing the heliosphere in 2012 and 2018, revealed it is more like a bubble.
There's Something Strange Going On Inside Neptune | Space
The storm was something of a surprise. In the southern hemisphere there was a swirling, counter-clockwise wind of up to 1,500 mph (2,414 km/h) — the strongest ever recorded. Astronomers called it the Great Dark Spot, and while it had gone by the time the Hubble Space Telescope looked at the planet five years later, they were keen to learn why the winds were so extreme.
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They were also perplexed by another issue: Voyager 2 revealed that Neptune is warmer than Uranus , despite being further from the sun. As physicist Brian Cox discussed in his BBC documentary, The Planets : "The source of this extra heat remains a mystery." But does that mean we have a double-puzzle on our hands, and can one mystery help to explain the other in some way?
Before we begin to address the two issues at hand, we must first look at what is actually meant by "warmer". Since Neptune is a gas giant , we cannot test the globally average temperature at ground level in the way that we could on Earth's solid surface. Instead, with Neptune's core likely to be small, temperature measurements must be taken at an altitude. Trouble is, which one?
NASA Needs to Update Its Rules to Keep Our Solar System Clean
NASA published a response to the Planetary Protection Recommendations, and aims to rethink its approach to ensure cleaner and safer missions.
NASA has been following the same guidelines to prevent contamination spreading from space onto our planet for the past 50 years.
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Planetary protection is meant to prevent or minimize biological contamination in our solar system. The aim is to limit the number of microbes we send into space and to other planets, so as to ensure we're able to study these areas in their natural habitats.
It's not all about protecting other planets and studies in space, though. Planetary protection is also meant to protect our Earth from outside contaminants.
Tune into the Planetary Protection Independent Review Board teleconference as they discuss findings and recommendations to protect the solar system from contamination as the face of #space exploration changes - TODAY at 3:30pm EDT https://t.co/tFtuz6OTqI via @NASA pic.twitter.com/cjxOOCgWhW
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